Early Scott Internationals Back in Print

Thanks to WGRADY for alerting us to the following.

An Amos Advantage advertisement in the August 25, 2008 Linn's shows a number of long out-of-print Scott International "Blue" Albums as once again available. These are Volume 1 (1840-1940) in 4 parts, Volume 2 (1940-1949) in 2 parts, Volume 3 (1949-1955) in 2 parts, and volume 12 (1976-1977). Availability comes at a price, though: the reprinted parts retail for $150 each; $120 for Amos Advantage members. I don't know how quickly they ship. The Amos Advantage website shows all of these parts as "temporarily out of stock" but to contact customer service to order. An Amos Advantage rep indicated in an email that they are able to "special order" these volumes. So, for the time being, it is once again possible to purchase International pages from 1840-2006.

ADDENDUM (9/11/08):

I decided to go ahead and "special order" the first of the four parts. Rather than the four weeks Customer Service initially estimated, it only took a little over one week for 1A1 to arrive.

I asked Amos Advantage Customer Service whether the reprinted Scott Internationals were using "print on demand?" The reply was that "we are using the same type of print technology that we have in the past for all our supplements-basically nothing different. We send the files to a printer to print the supplement/orders that are needed." For more detail on offset versus digital printing of these reprints, see the thread in the Virtual Stamp Club.

I also asked Customer Service whether there was any intention to bring back other out-of-print Scott titles, and the answer was yes, "over time." No decision has been made about Minkus titles such as the Master or Supreme Global.

Based on quickly leafing through the reprint, it appears that in the 4 part version, the illustrations and titles have not been reset. I don't have an earlier print of 1A1 to compare with the new one, but in comparison with the 1947 and 1969 editions, the images are much more contrasty. In almost all cases, this doesn't interfere with identification, but a few cuts are muddy (e.g., the Green Bayern Scott # 92).

In the 4 part version, every country is in alphabetical order and begins on its own page. To maximize continuity with later Internationals, the "back of the book" issues are also often on their own pages. For example, regular issues and commemoratives of Australia are on three pages, followed by a blank page, a page of Australian airmails, a blank page, a page with Australian postage dues, and then a blank page. For countries where there are Offices abroad or Occupation issues, these may also be given their own pages. Many of the additional pages have only a few stamps on them and blank versos.

So, by way of comparison, my quick count of the "2008" Part 1A1 came up with 582 front and back pages whereas the equivalent coverage in the 1947 edition occupied only 340 pages front and back. If the number of pages in 1A1 is any indication, you would at the very least need two of the larger Scott International binders to hold all four parts. Add interleaving or thousands of stamps and three binders would probably be more practical.

ADDENDUM (11/09): The Internet Hobby Supply website gives number of pages as follows:
1A1: 292 double-sided pages
1A2: 269 double-sided pages
1B1: 276 double-sided pages
1B2: 368 double-sided pages
Combined set sold by the company: 1,139 double-sided pages (according to the website; however, this total doesn't match the total for the individual volumes)

International Society of Worldwide Stamp Collectors

One of the interesting aspects of any type of collecting is that the activity can be enjoyed as a social pursuit or by determined individualists. (For more about why collectors collect, I recommend Hunter Davies entertaining "Confessions of a Collector.") Turns out that even worldwide collectors have our own group. I've known about the ISWSC for awhile and now that I've embarked on this project, I thought I would try the organization out. The Society is an APS affiliate and its "375+ members in more than 50 countries believe that worldwide stamp collecting is the most fun and challenging area of philately today." The ISWSC has a well-edited newsletter, sales and swap circuits, trading lists, auctions, stamp ID service, and a strong commitment to encouraging youth stamp collecting. For more information and a sample copy of their newsletter, "The Circuit," visit http://www.iswsc.org/.

Their March-April 2007 Newsletter contained the roster of the organization which indicates collecting interests. Of the 375 members, most don't discriminate chronologically in their worldwide collection (but most have other more specialized collecting interests, too.) I count 92 individuals who collect worldwide between a specific set of years. While 1840-1940 appears to be most popular, the ranges vary widely. Many start with 1840 but end at a different year: 1980, 1972, 1950, 1970, 1948, to name just the first few. Several start at 1900. Others have chosen a range using criteria that isn't obvious to me (1870-1982, for instance). A few collect a single year, for example the year of their birth or stamps issued in the first year of the millenium.

Splitting/Interleaving

As much as I have enjoyed having every country housed in a single volume, this 1300 page behemoth was a little unwieldy to handle, especially when working with stamps at the inside margins. And I was increasingly running into a stamps on facing pages catching at the corners. So when Subway Stamp Shop announced a sale, I bought two 4 inch G&K International Binders ($20 each, cheaper than I've seen them on eBay), stocksheets made specifically for the Internationals, and glassine interleaving. While watching TV, I split the single volume into two binders and inserted the interleaving between each page--in addition to solving the problem of adjacent pages rubbing against each other, it actually adds a touch of class to the albums. The downside is that with interleaving, the dual volumes are still pretty heavy. But the pages do lie flatter and it is easier to work with stamps no matter where they fall on the page.

The stocksheets are an experiment. If you aren't familiar with these, the International ones are thinner and more flexible than standard stocksheets. I put a set of the 5 row ones at the back of each of the volumes. The idea is to have a place to put random stamps until I can place them where they belong. This includes stamps that on occasion have fallen out the volume proper. I'll report back when I learn if this system works.

More on "They Collected the World"

I posted a variation of the following a couple of days ago on the Virtual Stamp Club message board:

A poster had asked why there were so many more albums visible in a photograph of the two collectors than the eleven Internationals they had completed. There is some information on this in an article by Stan Cornyn that appeared in Linn's Stamp News in early 1978 (sorry I don't have the exact citation). The original seven International volumes in 1971 were expanded to eleven after the collectors added interleaving. I assume they did this with the subsequent volumes that were published between 1971 and 1977. The rest of the holdings, as another poster thought, were comprised of duplicates or stamps that weren't in the albums. For example, they had several complete plate reconstructions of the Great Britain #33 penny red. More numerous, were complete sets of stamps that were represented in the Internationals as short sets. They would add the remaining stamps on extra pages. According to the Linn's article, in the first year they filled two closets with "amateur collections bought at auction."

Here a a couple of other quotes from the Linn's article that shed life on this project:

The two collectors split their duties. Cornyn maintained the collection and provided the financing. Geller compiled statistics and maintaining the wantlists. Both were "responsible for the hardest part: placating our wives and hiding the amounts of money being spent."

In the first year, the collectors "came closest to pure, amateur collecting. [Sorting through and identifying] those great ranges of nickel stamps that are incredibly hard to locate: ...China overprints, Argentine officials, India States..."

They found that the Iron Curtain countries were the easiest to complete. The only difficult series was the Romania 1952 surcharges.

"The toughest set to acquire was Spanish Sahara 36-50."

Interestingly, some then recent issues were problematic (Paraguay 704-07 and Central African Republic 126-8).

One problem that I wouldn't have guessed was spaces in the albums for sets that were announced but never issued (e.g., "the Jamaican Human Rights set that was shown in our album, but withdrawn in favor of Jamaica 271-73.")

In spite of all of the barriers, they kept true to there original goal of filling every blank space in all of the albums.

I especially like the last paragraph: "Would we recommend that others follow our path and collect the whole world? 'Absolutely,' Geller offers. 'For all the problems--and the International Volume 1 is really a bit of a mess--it's been the most fun I've had since my honeymoon.'"

"They Collected the World"

The article mentioned in my earlier post about the two collectors who successfully completed the first eleven Scott Internationals makes a very interesting read. (Thanks to Len Beasley who posted the Washington Post article on the Virtual Stamp Club message board).

The two collectors were Stan Cornyn, a record industry executive and Murray Geller, a planetary astronomer. The impetus for the project came when Cornyn bought a set of Scott Internationals for his 12 year old son who turned out to be more interested in skateboarding. The two men first thought about only filling the volumes with stamps costing less than a nickel. They then agreed that a dime wouldn't be too bad. At some point, the desire to fill all those spaces triumphed over economy.

Not unsurprisingly, dealers felt this was a foolhardy endeavor: nobody collects the world! And their fellow collectors who were specialists argued that acquiring 195,219 stamps was something anyone could do and not fit for real philatelists. Why didn't they put their time to better use by researching, say, "19th-century ship arrivals showing mail service to Latin America."

The collectors had 11,965 stamps in July 1972. By January 1975 they had filled all but 1394 of the 195,219 spaces. At this stage, "the hunt [became] more important than the object of the hunt." Some of the last acquisitions took a lot of effort. After all, these were the days before email, much less the World Wide Web. Syria Scott # 106a, Syria RA12, Paraguay 704-7, and Spanish Sahara 36-50 were toughies--especially Syria 106a which is an error that doesn't belong in the album in the first place (2007 catalog value is $125). They purchased it from a dealer in Damascus. The last stamp to be acquired was from a New York City dealer: the Malaya Kelantan # 10 overprint. And then it was done. Every space in 29 binders filled.

Cornyn and Geller claimed to not know how much they had spent, although the estimated value of the completed collection was six figures in 1978. They are less reticent about the time it took: around 8000 hours.

Do you remember your first?

Stamp album, that is. Mine was published by Minkus and titled, appropriately enough, My First Stamp Album. My father gave me the album as part of a kit, My First Stamp Outfit. The kit included the album which had spaces for 4300 stamps, a packet of 100 all different stamps (one hopes all in the album), a plastic pocket magnifier, 1000 stamp hinges, stamp tongs, and adhesive flags and coats of arms of the world. Cost for the kit was $2.95 (1959). Although my album and kit probably disappeared before I was in high school, I remember distinctly some of the stamps that came with it, such as Scott # SD7, the 20 cent Special Delivery stamp featuring a 1920s postal truck which was decades before my time, as well as some 3 cent US commemoratives which were only a year or two old. It's interesting how some things stick with you.

Filling one volume? Try Eleven!

Thanks to Ron Mitchell via the Virtual Stamp Club, I've learned that "Stan Cornyn and Murray Geller filled all the International albums that existed at the time (eleven) over about six years in the 1970s. Their story was reported by Cynthia Gorney in the Washington Post in an article called "They Collected the World." ...[It] was reprinted in Scott's Monthly Stamp Journal, July 1978, pp. 16-17 and 20-21."

The original Washington Post citation is "They Collected the World: The Herculean Effort for a Grand Total of 195,219 Stamps. In a Herculean Effort, They Collected the World." By Cynthia Gorney, Special to The Washington Post. Apr 26, 1978, B1-[B2?] (in the "STYLE Entertainment People Comics" section).

The collection was sold by Collectors Auction Service in four sales under the title "Cornyn - Geller All - World Collection": Part One, Countries A-F : March 1, 1978 ; Part Two, Countries G-M : August 1, 1978 ; Part Three, Countries M-R : November 1, 1978; and Part Four, Countries S-Z : March 15, 1979.

I've requested a copy of the Scott's Monthly reprint from the APS Library as well as the auction catalogs and will post more information later. If anyone knows of others who have completed a volume 1 (or more), please let me know.